Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This afternoon, I took a phone call from a woman in my constituency. She rang to tell me her story and the reason an extension to maternity leave was so important to her. She was carrying twins. Tragically, she lost one of the babies. She continued with her pregnancy but it was a very difficult pregnancy. She was grieving for her baby and the birth was very traumatic. This woman has not had access to any counselling or physiotherapy and she is both physically and emotionally scarred following that experience. Childbirth and having a baby should be something that a woman treasures. However, this woman is in a very difficult position at the moment. She told me she needs extra time for her body and mind to heal. She needs time to get the supports that were denied to her due to Covid. She is due to return to work in September and she does not think she will be in a position to do so. She is going to be faced with the choice of looking after herself, her baby and her own health or going back to work. That is a very difficult choice for any mother to have to make.

I learned all about this woman because I picked up the phone and listened to her story. I really wish the Government had listened to all those women who have been telling their stories over the past few weeks and months. Listening to her story, it became blatantly obvious that this call for an extension to maternity leave is not a luxury or something nice to have but an absolute necessity to support mothers for whom motherhood in this period has been very traumatic, scary, lonely and stressful. There are many women who have this story to tell.

Not only did mothers find themselves in challenging situations during maternity leave but they are now facing various barriers to returning to work. The roadmap to economic recovery has largely ignored two very important sectors that support women and families in the workforce, namely, childcare and education. Parents, particularly women, have been dealing with these until now in the absence of any cohesive policy and strategy aligning the reopening of crèches and schools with the reopening of the economy. With approximately 60% of childcare facilities taking up Government supports, there is a question mark over the other 40%. We are finding that childcare has yet to return to normal capacity as the sector reopens. It is particularly difficult to find care for children under one year of age. Without adequate childcare, mothers have had to face some very hard decisions. Some have returned to work part time, while others have had to quit work altogether. Many are working from home while minding the baby and others are taking annual leave and parental leave to try to carry them through until childcare is available again. This leads to fears of a two-tier workforce emerging as women are forced to choose between the domestic and professional demands in their lives.

What new mothers need now is time. They need time to catch up on some of the important health checks for themselves and their babies and to source childcare. Extending maternity leave would buy them crucial time to manage their transition back into the workforce. This time has been taken away from them as a result of the pandemic. If the Government had taken time to listen to all of those mothers and the stories they told outside the gates of Leinster House, they would have realised very early on that the proposed parental leave extension, which the Government mooted as an alternative to the extension of maternity leave, will not meet the needs of these women and families. It is not a simple issue of providing leave for parents. The issue is one of providing the correct leave at the correct time. Women on maternity leave need an extension to be implemented urgently. They do not have the luxury of waiting until budget 2021 for the Government to potentially sort this out or for the promise of additional paid parental leave to materialise because if or when that happens it will be too late for many of these mothers.

I will read from two documents, the first of which is the First 5 strategy, the ten-year plan to improve the lives of babies, young children and their families. The strategy states that, under a new paid parental leave scheme established in 2019, by 2021 "parents will each have an individual entitlement to seven weeks of paid parental leave". The second document is the programme for Government which clearly states the Government will extend "paid parental leave for parents to allow them spend more time with their baby in their first year". It also states the Government will implement "the First 5 Strategyfor babies, young children and their families". Despite the promises made in these documents, the Government announced an extension of paid parental live by three weeks, not the five weeks announced in this document. The First 5 strategy clearly states that by 2021-----

See this speech in context